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Parra offers assessment of outing

Parra offers assessment of outing

SURPRISE, Ariz. -- Brewers lefty Manny Parra finally hit a bump in the Spring Training road Thursday. First he asked reporters if he could sit down. Then he offered his blunt assessment.

"That was a rough one," said Parra, one of four candidates for three spots in the starting rotation.

Parra entered his fifth Cactus League appearance with a 0.64 ERA and left with it ballooning up to 4.58. He surrendered eight runs, all of them earned, on 10 Royals hits and four walks, three more hits and one more walk than he had allowed in his first four games combined.

With only one full turn in the starting rotation to go before the Brewers leave Arizona, and spots still up for grabs, it was not a great time for Parra's first poor outing.

"I wasn't hitting too many spots, and it seemed like I was either missing by a lot or I was missing over the plate, and they stayed on the off-speed pretty well," Parra said. "I just didn't have command.

"I thought I battled real hard, stayed aggressive. But to have that kind of outing is disappointing. ... Everyone is going to have a bad outing, but it's how you bounce back.

"Nights like tonight, where I don't pitch well, what can I say? It happens, and I know why. It would be a little bit scary if I didn't know why, but I do know why. It comes down to fastball command."

Seth McClung relieved Parra and recorded the final out of the fourth inning, but surrendered three more runs in three innings of an 11-3 loss to Kansas City.

"They threw a lot of pitches up in the zone and out over the plate," manager Ned Yost said. "They just didn't command their pitches in a quality part of the strike zone, both of them. McClung threw 75 pitches in three innings, which is far too much for his kind of stuff. And Manny just battled from the first inning on."

Adam McCalvy is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.